Yo-yo's Weekend

by David Brining

  13.

  Dr Kirk's Magic Museum

  being very dark and very cramped and smelling extremely musty. He thinks for one awful minute he is trapped once again inside the fusty, sweaty confinement of Rue's magic box. He is crammed in a foetal position, his knees rammed up his nose, his spine curved to screaming point. He has to get out before he suffocates, get out before he dies. Over his head is a faint circle of half-light. Twisting his body to the left, he inches towards it, following the fresher air insinuating itself inside his nostrils. God, he thinks. This is like being born again. He didn't like it the first time either.

  He forces his head through the narrow aperture. The light is dim but, after the darkness of the enclosed space, still bright enough to make him blink. It takes him a minute to work out where he is. He is curled up inside a large, ceramic jug. He sighs. A jug. Not again. Whilst he is reasonably interested in jugs and spends quite a lot of time looking at them and thinking about them, he never likes being one. He has to jiggle his shoulders past the spout. It is not easy but after a minute or two he is able to stand up and get his bearings. The jug is above the door of Joshua Turner's porcelain shop. Water slops over the spout and trickles over the maroon-painted board. A net curtain twitches in the upper-storey window of Cattle and Barber's silversmiths across the street. Bloody Mrs Barber is no doubt spying on the neighbours again. Nosy old cow.

  He steps out of the jug and slides down the drainpipe between Turner's and E. Kendall's Pharmaceutical Chemists next door. He is standing on the cobbles in wet, white underpants and a wet, white vest. No wonder Mrs Barber was curtain-twitching. Poor Mister Turner will have questions to answer in the morning. A small horse-drawn cab waits under a flickering gas-lamp. The windows of Hutchinson & Thompson, the grocers' shop which sells boxes of Cadbury's Cocoa Essence, bear the ruddy smears of tallow candle-flames whilst William Whincup's Spirit and Wine Merchants with its fat, jolly jars of Port, Scotch Whisky, Irish Whiskey, Rum, Gin and Sherry waits quietly for morning. Somewhere in the night a dog barks once, twice, then falls silent. Yo-yo shakes himself, although he could use a warming rum, and pads down the street to the corner. The cobbles hurt his bare feet. As he reaches Cooke & Sons Scientific Instrument Makers, he hears a voice and nearly wets himself.

  ''Come on, Sophie. Get up. It's nearly seven.''

  It seems to be coming from the flat above Wilson & Goodall, the Coppersmith's shop.

  ''Come on, Sophie. Get up. It's nearly seven.''

  ''All right, ma. I'm coming.''

  A candle bursts into life behind the net curtains. Another dog barks. A bird starts singing. Lights flicker rosily in the windows of William Foster's Haberdashery & Fancy Repository.

  ''Morning, Rose.''

  ''Morning, Ernie.''

  Nobody there. Just voices from H. Hardcastle, the Pawnbroker's est. 1770. On the corner of the half-timbered house next door, a cat yowls sleepily. A piano on wheels starts tinkling out a popular song. A passing charlady joins in:

  ''Come, come, come and make eyes at me

  Dahn at the ol' Bull an' Bush, na-na-na-na-na''

  The window of Hardcastle's contains many items of clothing but also musical instruments, violins, a flute, as well as fob watches and a cricket bat.

  ''Knives to grind?'' a male voice calls. ''Any knives to grind?''

  ''Are you goin' to t' football on Saturday?'' asks a small and very invisible boy.

  The dawn breaks, the light brightens, church bells chime, a milkmaid cries, a caged canary tweets. Yo-yo is expecting a chorus of ''Who will buy this wonderful morning?'' complete with marching bands, dancing window cleaners and cheery Cockerneys sweeping chim-chimerees or selling buttonholes at tuppence a bag (''Cor Blimey, stone the bleedin' crows Gavnah, would you Adam-and-Eve it? The old trouble-and-strife was making me a nice cup o' Rosie Lee last night when she only gorn an' tripped over her great plates-of-meat and fell down the old apples-and-pears…''). There might also be rosy-cheeked, flat-hatted urchins swiping wipes and considering themselves far too much at home in other people's pockets, winsome red-headed orphans bleating on (and on and on) about 'tomorrow' and reformed bank managers flying kites but he is to be pleasantly disappointed. This is not, after all, a West End musical, thank God.

  A Hansom cab waits in the street and now he knows where he is. This is Kirkgate, the Victorian street in the Castle Museum founded in 1938 by Pickering doctor John Lamplugh Kirk to preserve the best relics of the Victorian era for the post-modernly ironic tourists of the twenty-first century.

  '' 'Ello, Charlie,'' says a woman, ''Fancy a good time?''

  And this in a family museum.

  Yo-yo crosses the street to the half-timbered two-storey toy-shop. In its window, among the spinning tops, the hoops and the marbles, is a wooden Noah's Ark, the animals beautifully hand-painted, two-by-two and frozen in time, the tigers in orange and black, the giraffes in red and yellow, the penguins in black and white, Olly the Octopus in green - he waves - Mister Vanilla in lilac and ….. Mister Vanilla!

  Yo-yo leaps backwards. Mister Vanilla. Here. Behind glass and in miniature. And waving. Yo-yo looks round for a hiding place. There is a small yard near Beckett's Bank. It appears dimly lit and rather deprived. There is an iron water-pump set in a stone trough, a line of drying laundry, some run-down shops. A large, printed poster pasted behind the pump warns the public of TYPHUS FEVER OR CONTAGIOUS DISEASES, proclaiming boldly that

  IDLENESS, IGNORANCE, DIRT AND DISEASE GO TOGETHER

  A mean, green house has an advert in its window:

  GOOD LODGINGS

  APPLY WITHIN

  No Drinking

  Dammit. No point knocking on that door then.

  Miss Pole's Second-Hand Clothes Shop seems useful. He needs some togs, but those on display are mainly bustles and parasols, gloves and babies' bonnets. He grabs some ill-fitting black shoes, some ragged trousers, a torn, grubby shirt, a grey, worsted jacket and a black cap. He is putting them on when he hears a gurgle from a pram. There, inside a baby's bonnet, is Mister Vanilla, his fat face enclosed in frills and lace.

  ''Goo goo goo, my little kittykat.''

  He leaps backwards again. He's got to hide. But where?

  ''Hey!'' Someone hails him from inside William Henry White's Family Grocer. ''Want some work, boy?''

  ''Me, guv'nor?'' Yo-yo touches the peak of his cap.

  ''Yes, you. Our Dolly's come over all queer and the quack told her to take to her bed with a bottle of Pepper's Finest Tannin Throat Gargle so I'm short-handed today. Consider yourself at home, consider yourself one of the family….''

  ''Goo goo goo,'' gurgles Mister Vanilla. Yo-yo sticks a dummy in his mouth.

  ''I've taken to you so strong, there'll be a shilling in it,'' calls the voice, so before he can really think, Yo-yo is behind the counter wearing a stripy apron and serving a procession of people Wild Woodbine Cigarettes by W.D. & H.O. Wills of Bristol & London, Yorkshire Relish by Goodall Buckhouse & Co of Leeds, lime-cream and glycerine for glistening hair and other such delights. He is a little shocked by the front page of The Kirkgate Examiner his new employer is perusing, not the headline declaring

  SURVEY TO TACKLE YORK'S POVERTY

  or the inside stories about the British Army's victory at Manipur in Afghanistan or the interview with Mister William Chipchase of Bacon's Factory about making candles out of pig-fat or even the feature on Board Schools in York, but by the back-page spread reading

  OI MISTER TURNER, WHAT YOU BEEN UP TO?

  Boy in pants leaves China Seller’s at dead of night

  “I know what I saw,” says crazed, half-blind woman

  Yo-yo shakes his head. China sellers today, he tuts.

  ''Go get yourself some sweets from Terry's,'' says William Henry White, handing over a shiny new shilling. ''It's just round the corner.''

  ''Why, thank 'ee kindly, mister,'' says Yo-yo. He knuckles his forehead and scampers out of the shop.

  Terry's Sweet-Shop is in the
next street, facing William Alexander's Printer, Publisher, Bookseller and Stationer. This is a handsome building, double-fronted. Yo-yo scours the hard-backed volumes stacked on the shelves behind the glass. Henry's Bible, Family Prayers, A History of England in several volumes, The National Encyclopedia in thirteen volumes, Froissart's Chronicles, plans of Harrogate, maps of York, but NO FICTION. None at all. Not even Dickens and Household Words. Not Thackeray nor even Jane Austen. This bookseller does not do frivolity like fiction.

  Yo-yo joins a crowd of other urchins bunched round two slot machines near the clock shop. One shows ''Rescue from a Burning House''. A model house lit from inside appears to be on fire. A model fire engine emerges from a shed. A model fireman climbs up a ladder with a model baby over his shoulder. The urchins applaud as the fire flickers out. The second machine is even more exciting. It depicts ''The English Execution''. A boy inserts his penny and the show begins. The model prison's doors creak open to reveal a tiny priest blessing a figure with a bag on his head and a rope round his neck. A tiny judge wears a wig. A tiny policeman carries a truncheon. The trapdoor opens and the tiny prisoner falls to his death. The urchins cheer.

  ''That's showin' you, Mister Turner, you paedo queer,'' crows the boy who owned the penny.

  ''Yeah,'' says another gleefully. ''An' if'n they catch his playmate, they'll stretch 'is neck 'n' all, the little bummer boy.''

  Yo-yo shields his face with a hand and heads away to the chocolatier. He purchases a paper-bag of lemon drops, some liquorish laces and some peppermint cakes. Not a bad reward for a hard day's work. He stops outside S. & P. Knapton's Musical Instrument Makers. Haydn's Creation bound in red stands proudly next to the sheet music of V.S. de Dobrowolski's Match-Box Polka but, pasted on the wall, is a poster that excites all the small boys in Kirkgate. Mister Carter THE AMERICAN LION KING, it reads, Trained Animals LIONS, TIGERS, LEOPARDS, PANTHERS &C who will make their 3rd appearance in York, Nov 18th, This Present Wed.

  ''Lawks-a-mercy,'' says a boy, ''Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Our Ada'll never thoil it.''

  Yo-yo grins and slurps a liquorish lace through his lips. Suddenly a finger and thumb catch him by the ear and a rough voice scowls ''So there you are, you little tyke. Think you'd truant, did you? Well, we'll see about that.''

  ''I got a job,'' gasps Yo-yo, as he is dragged away by the ear to a taunting chorus of catcalls from the other boys. ''I work for Mister White the Family Grocer.''

  ''A likely tale,'' returns the rough voice.

  ''Ow, my ear!'' Yo-yo protests, but it's not his ear he needs to worry about. He is hauled roughly into a schoolroom and, before he can resist, is bent over a desk and beaten across the buttocks with a leather strap. He howls in pain.

  ''Now,'' says the schoolmaster, ''You'll stand in the corner with the Dunce's Cap on and learn your lessons and if you skip school again, I'll tawse you till you can't sit down.''

  Sniffing and wiping his nose with his sleeve, Yo-yo glares at the man. He is built like a bullock and has manners to match. A balding pate, a sweat-gleaming, brick-red face, a barrel chest, a black mat of thick hair on his hands, the schoolmaster seems to be permanently choking. A surer candidate for a coronary Yo-yo has never encountered.

  ''It's against the law to hit children,'' he says defiantly, blinking back tears.

  ''Stuff and nonsense,'' the schoolmaster replies. ''The day they outlaw beating boys is the day the world stops working. It'll lead to a breakdown of law and order, the end of civilisation as we know it.''

  ''I'll ring Childline,'' Yo-yo threatens, ''Get the law on you.''

  ''Will you indeed?'' says the schoolmaster. ''Well, do you know what the police will do?''

  ''Yeah,'' says Yo-yo. ''They'll give your name to the Screws of the World, you'll make the front page and you'll never work again, you perv.''

  ''No,'' says the schoolmaster, ''They'll give you a clip round the ear and send you away.'' He shakes his head. ''Boys need beating. Like dogs. It's the only way they learn.''

  Yo-yo stares at the portrait of Queen Victoria, the abacus, the low wooden benches, the motto Honesty and Industry in all things written in chalk on the blackboard, the reading book in his hand entitled Tray and Fan, the opening line ''We have two dogs…''

  ''Old Ann Lee at the cot is ill…'' intones a little girl.

  ''Two twos are four, three twos are six, four twos are eight,'' intones the class.

  He rubs his stinging buttocks and faces into the corner.

  ''Good day, my dear fellow,'' says a weasly voice.

  ''Aha,'' cries the schoolmaster, ''The school board inspector. Welcome, my dear sir. Wackem Thrashboy at your service.''

  ''I trust you are teaching them nothing but FACTS, Mister Thrashboy. FACTS are what these children need.''

  ''Indeed I am, sir.''

  The voice is vaguely familiar. Yo-yo turns his head but Mister Thrashboy bellows ''You! Dunce! Face the wall!''

  ''FACTS are what makes a man, Mister Thrashboy,'' continues the inspector, ''Not Fancy. We have no need of imagination in education, Mister Thrashboy.''

  God, thinks Yo-yo. This sounds like Dr Molasses. He is suddenly as frightened as a Southerner catching someone's eye on the Tube and cannot resist turning round. It isn't Molasses. It is Truss, the Circus Manager.

  ''Dunce!'' roars Mister Thrashboy, ''Do you want another whipping?''

  ''Mister Truss, it's me, Yo-yo.'' Mister Truss perspires. ''You remember? Reefer's nephew? From the circus? Mister Truss?'' Mister Truss wipes his face with a large pocket handkerchief. Mister Thrashboy seizes Yo-yo's collar and waggles the tawse. ''Please, Mister Truss….. I'm Venus Periwinkle's son….''

  ''Ah,'' says Mister Truss, ''Mister Thrashboy, I think I have found our runaway.''

  ''A runaway, sir? Surely not, sir.''

  Truss catches Yo-yo by the arm. ''Always runnin' away, ain't you, Oliver?''

  ''Eh?''

  ''Don't worry, Mister Thrashboy,'' oils Truss, ''We'll take care of him, d--n his eyes.'' Out of the corner of his mouth he hisses that Yo-yo should ''work with [him]'' and shakes him like a dog shakes a brat. ''Back to the workhouse with you, Davey, d--n your eyes.''

  ''Oh,'' says Mister Thrashboy, ''Workhouse brat, eh?''

  ''That he is, sir, that he is.'' Mister Truss digs his thumbs into his waistcoat pocket. ''Mother was a bad 'un, sir, a right regular bad 'un. Took one look at him and promptly died, sir. Left him to the parish, sir.'' Truss lowers his voice and glances around conspiratorially. ''I shouldn't really tell you this, but she left him a valuable ring which we need to pawn with Old Mister Hardcastle to pay for his gruel.''

  ''Gruel, sir?'' says Mister Trashboy. ''When I were a lad, there were fourteen of us living in t' mill and eating nobbut twigs and leaves.''

  ''Twigs and leaves, sir?'' says Mister Truss. ''When I were a lad, there were fifty-eight of us living in t' dustbin and eating nobbut stones and rocks.''

  ''Stones and rocks, sir?'' says Mister Thrashboy. ''When I were a lad, there were a hundred and seven of us living in a newspapper and eating nobbut warm puke.''

  ''Warm puke, sir?'' says Mister Truss. ''When I were a lad, there were four thousand, six hundred and twenty-eight, and a half, living in a matchbox and eating nothing but snot.''

  ''Warm snot?'' says Yo-yo, ''You were lucky.''

  ''Young Pip is particularly good at stitching mailbags and sewing footballs, sir.'' Truss winks at Yo-yo. ''He could almost be a Bangladeshi and work for a well-known Premier League team based beyond the Pennines, 'cept he's a bit too old at ten and eats every so often.''

  ''But he's thin enough to sweep the chimbley,'' opines Mister Thrashboy.

  ''Oh,'' pleads Yo-yo, falling to his knees and clasping his hands. ''Please don't send me up again. Please, Mister.'' He sobs theatrically. ''It's dark and it's hot and the flames burn my bum. The soot stuffs my nose and the smoke chokes my lungs.'' He wipes his nose with his sleeve. ''Please don't send me up again.''

  ''Nonsense, Oliver, d
--n your eyes'' says Mister Truss, ''You're the best d--n 'weeping boy in Old London Town. Mister Sniffwit's chimbley needs a d--n good seeing to and only your brush can get into all his nooks and crannies.'' He winks again. ''Now how about a delicious feast of jellied eels and cockles and whelks before we go?''

  ''Yum,'' lies Yo-yo.

  ''Thank 'ee kindly, sir,'' Truss says to Thrashboy. ''I shall leave him with the beak until the beadle collects him.'' He takes Yo-yo's hand and leads him to the Kirkgate Police Station next door. ''You'll wait there for Beadle Bumbarrel like a good boy, won't ye, Davey?'' He lowers his voice again. ''I'm going to fetch your uncle.''

  ''Oh, yes, sir,'' says Yo-yo, eagerly stepping through the iron-barred door. ''I'll wait here.'' The door slams behind him. A key grates in the lock. ''Hello? Mister Truss?'' He rattles the door. ''Mister Truss?'' Yo-yo is imprisoned.

  ''Going for your uncle, Oliver.'' Truss' voice echoes eerily from the white-washed walls of the passageway. ''You just wait. You just wait.''

  Yo-yo shrugs, lies full-length on the wooden bench, his hands behind his head, cap pushed down over his eyes, and swings his feet up. He might as well get some kip while he waits. It seems to be getting darker. Somewhere far away he hears the voices of children singing 'Tom, Tom the Piper's Son, Stole a pig and away did run…' then 'Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man'. He thinks it may be the Bedern Children, the dozens of orphans who died of disease and starvation in the York Ragged School managed by George Pimm in the mid-nineteenth century, children whose corpses Pimm concealed in his cellar, until their tapping, scratching and wailing drove him to drink, insanity and finally suicide, children who still haunt Bedern Alley and sing their ghostly songs, 'Tom, Tom the Piper's Son, Stole a pig and away did run…' and

  One, two, kick the shoe, Three, four, kick the door,

  Five, six, break the sticks, Seven, eight, break the gate,

  Nine, ten, kill the men.

  but it isn't. Instead of the silvery tinkling voices of children, a rough voice accosts him aggressively.

  ''My name is Thomas Ward, but God help you if you use it,'' begins the man, ''You call me Sir, or Master Turn-keep. Get your feet off that bench and sit up straight, you rogue, you bounder, you ne'er-do-well.'' The ghost of the gaoler glares dyspeptically through the bars.

  ''He hasn't gone for the Beadle,'' says William Petyt, a ghostly debtor who materialises on the bench next to him, ''He's gorn for Vanilla.'' The man's face is bruised and bloodied. ''I died in this cell on August 27th 1741. I was awaiting transportation to Australia for debt. Thomas Griffith beat me so badly I succumbed to my injuries. My fellow prisoners brought a private prosecution for murder but he was acquitted, God rot him.''

  ''Shut your filthy mouth, Petyt,'' yells Thomas Ward.

  ''Up yours, Ward,'' growls Petyt.

  ''Tom, Tom the Piper's Son….'' sing the children.

  ''You, prisoner! If you want food,'' shouts Thomas Ward, ''You come to me.''

  ''You got to get out,'' says William Petyt, ''Or they'll do for you like they did for me.''

  ''Stole a pig and away did run…''

  ''And I'll spit in your face.''

  ''They'll kill you in here.''

  ''The pig was eat and Tom was beat…''

  ''If you want an extra blanket….''

  ''You have to get out.''

  ''Tom went roaring down the street.''

  Yo-yo covers his ears and screams:

  In the sudden silence, he slips through the bars and emerges into a cobbled street. A gas-lamp is burning in the dim twilight.

  ''Where are you, my pretty?'' Mister Truss's treacly voice oozes through the still evening air. ''Come to Trussy.''

  Yo-yo gulps. There are a number of shop-window style dummies in a display modelling Victorian clothing. He dives inside a voluminous crinoline dress. The model smiles.

  ''Got you, my pretty,'' says Rue.